CNU poll shows Harris leads Trump by double digits in Virginia. If you look closer, things get more complicated.

Where do the candidates stand? You can compare them side-by-side in our Voter Guide.

The Vanderbilt Commodores upset the No. 1-ranked Alabama Crimson Tide on Saturday.

Maybe that means nothing at all, but if you don’t like the poll results you’re about to read, just keep that in mind.

We’ve had two new polls on the Virginia race come out — one last week from Virginia Commonwealth University, one Monday from Christopher Newport University. Both show Kamala Harris leading Donald Trump in Virginia, although VCU showed her margin slipping and CNU showed it widening.

Let’s try to make sense of what we’re seeing. For our purposes today, I’m going to look at seven different polls, all taken by universities since August — six in Virginia plus Emerson College in Massachusetts. There have been some other polls, but they haven’t always released the cross-tabs the way university polls do, so my bias is on the side of transparency. I’ve also included the pollster ranking from the Fivethirtyeight data website that attempts to rank pollsters based on their accuracy; it lists 250 pollsters in all. You’ll see that some of our Virginia schools score quite well.

What you see is that five of these seven polls show Harris with a clear lead. Two show the race much closer. One of those, the Roanoke College poll, is also the earliest of the bunch. Democrats loudly disputed it at the time. Regardless of who’s right or wrong, that one feels out of date by now. The Mary Washington poll that also showed the race essentially tied was conducted about a month ago now. The three most recent ones are all consistent, showing Harris with a lead ranging from 6 percentage points to 11 percentage points.

For context: In 2016, Hillary Clinton won Virginia with a margin of 5.3 percentage points. In 2020, Biden won the state with a margin of 10.1 percentage points. Generally speaking, these three most recent polls are consistent with the votes in the previous two elections in which Trump was a candidate.

Independents hold the key to the election 

Some people just look at the score on the scoreboard — and come the day after Election Day, that’s what will matter. For now, I like to look at the polling equivalent of box scores: the cross-tabs. Specifically, what are independents thinking? We can trust that Democrats will back Harris and Republicans will back Trump. It’s those swing voters who will make the difference.  The CNU poll says 31% of its respondents are independents.

This is where we get the biggest differences between these polls. The CNU poll shows Harris winning independents 49% to 34%. Emerson shows independents split with only a slight edge for Harris: 29.7% to 25.4%, with the rest undecided. VCU says independents favor Trump, 28.8% to 15.9%. 

These are three very different results. Don’t get hung up on the numbers; pay more attention to the directions and the margins. One says Harris wins independents by a lot, one says she wins independents by a little, the third says Trump wins independents. Who’s right? Ask me in November.

Let’s probe deeper. Just who are these independents, and what do they care about?

On the top issues, independents this year are closer to Republicans than they are to Democrats 

News flash: Democrats and Republicans care about different things. In the CNU poll, the top concern among Republicans is inflation and the economy: 39% of Republicans cite that. Another 24% cite immigration. Democrats don’t seem particularly concerned about either: Only 12% of Democrats cite the economy and only 1% cite immigration as their top concern. Instead, the top concerns among Democrats are threats to democracy (31%) and abortion (16%). The CNU poll shows Republicans are about as unconcerned about threats to democracy as Democrats are about immigration. If you want to understand the 2024 election, there it is.

Now, here’s where things get complicated for both parties. Like Republicans, independents say their top concern is inflation and the economy: 37% of independents listed that first. Like Democrats, though, independents are concerned about threats to democracy — just not as much as Democrats. Still, 19% of independents list that as their top concern. Both immigration and abortion rank a lot lower, down in the single digits.

This means several things: To win those independents, Harris has to spend time talking to them about something that her base isn’t all that worked up about (the economy). That means she also has to do something to fire up her base, which means talking about threats to democracy (which does move some independents) and abortion (which doesn’t).

By contrast, when Trump talks about the economy, he’s speaking to both his base and independents at the same time; he’s got the easier job there. When he talks about immigration, though, he’s mostly talking to his own people.

Different pollsters ask questions in different ways so we can’t always make exact comparisons. However, generally speaking, every poll I’ve seen this year has listed the economy as voters’ top concern.  However, when we look more deeply, we see a split such as the one the CNU poll did. The VCU poll last week showed Republicans care about inflation first, Democrats care about abortion first. (Threats to democracy weren’t an option in that list). Independents in the VCU poll were more like Republicans, also listing inflation first, just not at the same levels.

The CNU poll offered respondents a list of eight issues and asked them which candidate they thought would handle that issue better. On six of the eight issues, independents said Harris. That would seem great for her except … one where independents said Trump would do better is the top one on their mind, the economy. The other was immigration. The fact that independents like Harris better on those six issues may not matter if their concern about the economy dominates their thinking.

Harris might well win Virginia because it’s a state that’s gone Democratic in four presidential elections in a row. However, if these results play out nationwide, this seems an opportunity for Trump and a danger for Harris: To win over independents, she has to campaign on something that’s a more natural issue for Trump. Put another way: If voters’ top concern is the economy, that’s never good for the party in power. If Trump wins, it will be because voters — primarily independent voters — are far more worried about inflation than they are about insurrection. Some elections are complicated; this one actually seems pretty simple. Voters don’t like Trump (he has a 58% unfavorable rating in the CNU poll), but they don’t like the economy, either.

Cao hasn’t solidified Republican support 

While the polls have sometimes bounced around on the presidential race, they’ve been very consistent about the Senate race: Democratic incumbent Tim Kaine leads Republican challenger Hung Cao by a comfortable margin. The CNU poll gives Kaine his largest margin yet:

You’d think that Cao might be able to hold tight to Trump and rise or fall with his fortunes in Virginia. The CNU poll suggests that’s not the case. It shows that 11% of Republicans actually support Kaine. By contrast, no Democrats are backing Cao.

I think Cao made a fundamental mistake by passing up two opportunities to debate Kaine before key audiences, the Virginia Bar Association and the Northern Virginia Chamber of Commerce. Somehow he thought he’d only need one debate to land a knock-out blow against Kaine — last week’s debate at Norfolk State. Instead, Cao’s most memorable line was about drag queens.

Despite all this … 

Republican congressional districts continue to outvote Democratic ones

I feel a little bit like Galileo here. He looked into the skies and saw things that defied the conventional wisdom of the time. We know that Democrats are more enthusiastic about early voting than Republicans are — and yet the early voting numbers compiled by the Virginia Public Access Project continue to show that Republican congressional districts have more early votes than Democratic ones. The Democratic ones are catching up, but as of Monday, here’s what we have:

1st (Republican): 62,934
5th (Republican): 52,513
6th (Republican): 49,526
7th (swing but now held by a Democrat): 44,341
4th (Democratic): 43,605
2nd (swing but now held by a Republican): 43,118
9th (Republican): 42,045
10th (Democratic): 40,349
8th (Democratic): 36,759
11th (Democratic): 36,250
3rd (Democratic): 28,124

What are we to make of a world where the 9th District in Southwest Virginia has cast more early votes than the 11th District in Northern Virginia? Or one where Vanderbilt upsets Alabama?

Here’s the candidate our readers are most curious about

This is Kelsey Marletta, a candidate for Radford School Board. In the first week of October, more readers have looked her up in our Voter Guide than any other candidate. While the presidential race may get the headlines, local candidates dominate the searches. We sent questionnaires to the candidates for U.S. Senate, U.S. House and more than 500 candidates for local offices across Southwest and Southside. We’ve now posted their answers (from the ones who replied). You can look them up in our Voter Guide.

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